She is the first German Chancellor to approach British Euroscepticism with an
open mind, not with disdain

Occasionally, I am invited by supporters of the UK Independence Party to acknowledge and salute Nigel Farage’s “courage”. According to his admirers, Ukip’s leader has the guts to say what other politicians dare not say, to speak the truth, to defy the “commissars of political correctness”, and other imaginary beings.

I can see that Farage has charisma and a music hall talent that meshes well with the needs of 21st-century television. One senses always the pervasive influence of reality TV in his manner and outbursts: The Only Way Is Enoch. Yet, in contrast to Powell, who did make political sacrifices in the name of conscience, I cannot see any bravery whatsoever in what the Ukip leader does or says.

Indeed, his speech on Friday to his party’s spring conference in Torquay was not an act of courage, but its precise opposite. “In scores of our cities and market towns, this country, in a short space of time, has, frankly, become unrecognisable,” he said. “Whether it is the impact on local schools and hospitals, whether it is the fact that in many parts of England you don’t hear English spoken any more, this is not the kind of community we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.” As the European elections in May draw close, it is time, he said, to lead a “patriotic fightback”.

Political courage is shown by those who risk their own careers, or have the candour to admit that a problem is not straightforward, or the statesmanship to resist the temptations of lazy demotic. Instead, Farage offered us one of the most deplorably divisive speeches delivered by a mainstream party leader in recent years. It was not so much a “dog whistle” as a man waving a juicy bone in the direction of any Staffordshire bull terrier he could find, shouting: “Tea time, Shep!”

What, for instance, did he mean by “unrecognisable”? Does that include the faces of those Afro-Caribbeans who (to take but one example) have done so much for decades to staff the NHS? Or the British Asians whose work ethic has (among a great many other things) transformed retail culture in this country? Does he include the Eastern Europeans who have manned the construction industry and remade our cities’ skylines? Or the high-value migrants who have helped London to become a world city? These are the sights of success, prosperity and a nation-state thriving in a globalised planet. If Farage finds all this “unrecognisable” (in a pejorative sense), that says more about him than about the magnificent, pluralist, compassionate Britain in which he is fortunate enough to live. It is the Ukip leader and his followers who are the true refugees – asylum seekers from reality.

The greatest disservice that his party has performed is to obscure the sheer complexity of the issues to which it addresses itself in big neon letters. The management of migration has long been unequal to the pressures of modern population mobility: “not fit for purpose” as John Reid, the then home secretary, put it so memorably in 2006. The administrative challenge is compounded by the tug-of-war between capacity (limited housing and public services) and the fluctuating needs of the economy (nothing chills a recovery as reliably as excessive controls on the labour market). And – as if this demographic balancing act were not tricky enough – Britain’s membership of the European Union limits the extent to which it can truly claim to control its own borders.

Herein lies the dilemma facing David Cameron and, if he has his way, the rest of us. The Prime Minister, unlike Farage, wants Britain to stay in the EU. He also believes that, almost four decades since the 1975 referendum, it is time that the British were consulted explicitly on the matter. As he promised in his Bloomberg speech in January last year, a Conservative government would renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership and then consult the nation on the new deal – “In” or “Out” – before the end of 2017.

It is as part of this lengthy “tantric” process (as Cameron himself describes it) that Angela Merkel’s visit to London last week should be seen. Nick Clegg has often warned the PM that he will end up “flying from one [EU] capital to another seeking crumbs from the table-top” to present to his own Eurosceptic backbenchers as evidence that the argument is going his way. Cameron’s approach – described to me by one senior source as “optimistic but realistic” – is to deploy to full advantage the leverage which he believes Britain will have as the eurozone nations construct the new treaty that they undoubtedly want and need.

The German Chancellor’s re-election last September was as strategically important to Cameron as Clegg’s survival as Lib Dem leader after the Eastleigh by-election earlier in the year. Though his privileged position as First Friend to President Obama is an undoubted source of global cachet, he is much closer to Merkel, who has become his most valued confidante on the world stage (she helped him as he was preparing the all-important Bloomberg speech, for instance).

Was her visit a success? In a sense, the answer is implicit in the question. The fact that the Chancellor made a visit of this sort, of this warmth, of this character at all is good news for the PM and his blueprint. It does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that this plan will result in success. What it does mean is that those who have already written off the Cameron EU strategy are wrong.

“I firmly believe that what we are discussing here is feasible, is doable”: Also sprach Merkel. She is the first German Chancellor to approach mainstream British Euroscepticism with an open mind – not with disdain as an island pathology, a ludicrous atavism. It is impossible to imagine any of her predecessors making such a statement about a Tory plan to reorganise the EU and halt the “incoming tide” of European law long ago identified and declared irresistible by Lord Denning.

She also delighted Downing Street with her observation that “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Is there a will? Cameron and Merkel will resume their discussions later this month in Hanover. The debate about the next EU treaty will take years – in which context, it is striking that No 10 has started to compare this process with the long haul of economic recovery and to identify symmetries in the political determination required to see through both strategies.

Multi-dimensional diplomacy of this sort is not glamorous. It often fails. But not always. What is certain, even now, is that those who have already decided that they want Britain to leave the EU need a Conservative majority in 2015 to be sure of a referendum. Farage, with his ugly rhetoric, easy slogans and low-blow politics, is only increasing the probability of a Labour victory that would, at a stroke, end all hope of an In-Out vote. Now, Nigel: where’s the courage in that?